Hurry and get those high school and collegecredits—oh, wait, you’re struggling with APSpanish? Both the speech and writing?You shouldn’t be.

You’re Mexican-American.

Surrounded by words—Spanish, English, slurs

of the two now known as Tex-Mex and Spanglish, in bookshelveswhere duendes hide, the songs I now sing when aloneat home, the self-censoring of two tongues inside university hallways.

Push against those borders. Those Nobody will read you. You’re just a minority. Consider changing your name. Hola amigos.

Magaly Garcia received an MFA in Writing & Publishing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has been published in Along the River III, UTRGV’s The Gallery (2013, 2015), VCFA’s Synezoma, and Francis House. She lives in south-south Texas, and when she isn’t writing she is summoning fantasmas to haunt her cat and cactus.